Tag Archives: political poem

Stand Up For Verity

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Stand Up for Verity

A fabulist can take the truth and spin it, change it, plan it,
but then it is no longer truth, for truth is carved in granite.
The real truth is indelible. Permanent. Etched in stone.
Don’t mess with it and call it truth. You must leave truth alone.
It can’t accommodate a stretch. It’s fierce in resolution.
It’s not right to bend it simply to find a solution.

Truth is truth and fabrication is another matter,
so do not conjure up a tale and claim it’s not the latter.
Though presidents and kings and poets scratching in their dormer
might for their single purposes stray away from the former,
there must be someone willing to call out their acts as ruthless,
for there’s no folly greater than to be led by the truthless.

 

The prompt words today are fabulist, fierce, accommodate and granite. Here are links:
https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/rdp-saturday-fabulist/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/10/20/fowc-with-fandango-fierce/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/10/13/daily-addictions-2018-week-41/accommodate
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/granite/

Reality Check

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Reality Check

I’m  withdrawing from the argument. I have no more opinions.
I abstain from giving voice to what I think to my few minions.
Thoughts fly swift and easy lately on the internet.
They are so filled with hate. How much more rancorous could they get?
Our fearful hateful leader might hem and haw and hem,
but the problem with such enemies is, they turn us into them!

My grass is fresh and verdant. Fresh flowers bloom every day.
I’ll watch them from my hammock and put politics away.
From the troubles of the world, I need a short vacation.
My back yard is so lovely, and nature an education
to stop and rest and notice all the pleasures of this life.
We need to take in all of it, not just the pain and strife.

I contemplate the garden, suspended in my nest.
Morrie jumps up to join me—an uninvited guest.
Suspended in my private world, I find no rancor there.
Just mariposas fluttering, suspended in the air
above the tabachine blossoms—a sort of meditation
better for my blood pressure than any medication.

I fall asleep and doze for hours. Awakening from my nap,
I try to rise and gently spill the small dog from my lap.
It’s feeding time for animals. I go to find the cats.
They swarm around my ankles, both for sustenance and pats.
It’s when I find the hummingbird they’ve left me like a treasure
that I’m reminded that all nature is a blend of pain and pleasure.

 

The prompt words today were abstain, verdant and swift. Here are the links:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/15/fowc-with-fandango-abstain/
https://wo/rdofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/15/verdant/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/swift

Stemming the Rage

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Street Mural on wood viewed in Guanajuato

 

Stemming the Rage

To seed grace and stability in these tempestuous times,
try not to retaliate in your tweets and rhymes.
Simply state the truth as you continue to perceive it.
If you do not stir angst you’re less likely to receive it.
Choose not to participate when small minds rant and bray.
Just find a saner audience you’re likelier to sway.
This isn’t always easy. Ghandi led the way,
and he moved the British at the end of day.

Whether Trump or Kim Jong-un, Hitler or Pol Pot 
could be swayed by passive resistance? Perhaps, or perhaps not.
But surely there are other souls—even ones of note
who might be nudged to change their minds and even change their vote.
If you can curb your anger and respond with facts and sanity,
perhaps you’ll find a route to chip away at their inanity.
Please take with a grain of salt this lesson that I preach.
Actually, I must admit, it’s me I’m trying to teach.

 

Word prompts for today were: grace, stability, tempestuous and retaliate. Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/rdp-monday-grace/
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/10/fowc-with-fandango-stability/
https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/10/tempestuous/
https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/09/daily-addictions-2018-week-36/retaliate

If We Listened to the Birds

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

If We Listened to the Birds

If I were a mighty bird,
fluent in both voice and word,
when the weather shifted colder,
I’d wing myself to royal shoulder,
have a perch and, I confess,
use all the powers I possess
to loosen up and leave my mark
on that stodgy matriarch,
to feel my presence and touch of wings
and know what necessary things
each creature in nature brings with it.
How each thing comes together to fit.

This I would find exhilarating.
By my presence, educating
the powers-that-be to think of nature
as more than just a nomenclature.
Perhaps I’d tell the president
that I have been heaven sent
to tell the powers that abide
that God’s not really on their side.
God would have us guard our earth
There’s more than money that marks its worth.
All of nature, without a doubt,
makes the world of man work out.

If those large personalities
who run our world would only, please,
take heed of what I have to say,
we’d survive to live another day,
another year, another eon.
We’d have a peaceful planet to be on.
The brother eagle that guides their flight
knows too well extinction’s plight.
The symbol there that marks their seal
is anguished over the ordeal
that fellow creatures of nature face
because of loss of living space.

Our national parks sold off for oil,
waters from which fish recoil,
oceans plugged with plastic waste
we idly cast off in our haste.
While politicians rail and bicker,
our society grows sicker.
Hospitals far out of reach,
schools encouraged not to teach
science, but religious fable
that makes the politicians able
to pull the wool over the eyes
of those who believe their disguise.

It’s true that often what we get
is exactly opposite
of what they promise, their rhetoric
stirring us to moods euphoric
when in fact they’re empty words
meant to bilk admiring herds.
Look deeper at what they profess.
They promise more, but give us less.

The prompts for today are bird, royal, exhilarating, possess. Here are the links, in case you want to play along:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/rdp-saturday-bird/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/08/fowc-with-fandango-royal/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/08/exhilarating/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/daily-addictions-2018-week-35/possess

Know It Alls: Sunday Prompts

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Know It Alls

Smug sequacious  thinkers with narrow little minds,
seal up all their windows, pull down all their blinds.
Spend all their time and leisure thinking thoughts uncouth,
simplistic in their reasoning, avoiding hard hard truth.

The word prompts today were sequacious, tantalizing, leisure and infinite.
spacious

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/rdp-sunday-sequacious/ (lacking independence or originality of  thought.)

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/09/02/fowc-with-fandango-tantalizing/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/leisure/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/09/02/daily-addictions-2018-week-35/infinite

When We Let Our Leaders Fail Us

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IMG_0991

When We Let Our Leaders Fail Us

Way back in my innocence, I thought the world was fair.
My biggest daily decision was what I chose to wear.
The probability of danger then was very rare.
The world, not yet insidious, was still one I could bear.
I knew I could accomplish all that I would dare.
I didn’t fear the water or anguish o’er the air.
The very thought of fire did not move me to despair.
But as men work to turn the dream of nature to nightmare,
most of those in power do not seem to care,
letting some wreak damage as others simply stare,
mouths open in horror over  the whole affair.
Protestors standing in the street, protestors on the stairs,
poets writing poetry, crouched within their lairs,
looking at what God hath wrought and tearing at their hair.
Will our help come from heaven or approach us through the air,
coming from other galaxies to see how we might fare,
finally making contact not to conquer but to share,
setting down amongst us not to pillage, rape or tear,
but rather as our saviors, bent upon repair.

The prompts today were fair, probability, insidious and approach.  Here are the links:

https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/rdp-tuesday-prompt-fair/

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/28/fowc-with-fandango-probability/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/28/insidious/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/2018/08/26/daily-addictions-2018-week-34/ approach

Endangered Species

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Endangered Species

It bore investigation, the gods all seemed to think
to see what’s happening on Earth that’s raising such a  stink.
The clouds of poisonous vapors seemed to obscure their view
so they had to come much closer to see what they could do.
Here everyone seemed eager to screw the other guy,
sure that complete happiness was something they could buy.
They’d have to think of something to divert them from their wrath,
to deflect them from their lust for fortune to another path.

What if they gave them something to redirect their thought
from this mania for wanting what the other fella’s got?
They created Martin Cooper and made two guys named Steve,
gave them creativity and something up their sleeve
to invent these gadgets to connect us all together
so we could help each other in times of stormy weather.
But the plans of men and deities often go astray.
Even gods in heaven do not always know the way.

How could they know that iPads and tiny little phones,
the Internet and Facebook would turn us into drones
staring at our open hands or clicking selfie shots,
intent more on ourselves than in helping the have-nots?
While skulking in the background, cronies of corporation
plotted most unnoticed in corrupt cooperation
to keep the masses busy with their puzzles and their games,
their TV and their movies and their lists of contact names.

We all would be so busy staring at our palms
that no one would be worried. No one would suffer qualms
about what was happening—the greed and the pollution.
Our leaders all the problem and never the solution.
We sold our world for cyber toys, believed their staged reality.
Traded in our real world for scheduled banality.
Kardashians and Candy Crush, sitcoms and solitaire,
Twitter, selfies, Instagram—a virtual nightmare.

Have we really botched it? Will no one come to aid?
Will our species all die out? Sicken, fall and fade?
They say after Chernobyl the animals returned.
The grass and tees grew back where they formerly were burned.
Only humans can’t abide the mess that they have made.
as though they have created their own end by their charade.
It’s the way of evolution. Species come and species go
Those who do not worry as they vanish tell us so.

The thing that they don’t realize, just waiting round the bend
as species after species is herded toward its end,
of all endangered species, another they have hexed
may be homo sapiens, whose extinction may be next.

The prompts were below, investigation and eager. The links are below:

https://fivedotoh.com/2018/08/08/fowc-with-fandango-below/

https://wordofthedaychallenge.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/investigation/

https://dailyaddictions542855004.wordpress.com/eager